


A Tale of Two Children

by JustDance04



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s03e13 Last of the Time Lords, Gen, Year That Never Was, kind of anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 01:22:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5438279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustDance04/pseuds/JustDance04
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end, it was Gita that asked him to stay with them, even though Haresh and Rani had both been thinking it. The idea of leaving someone else's child to fend for himself wasn't a thought she could bear. So, even though they barely knew him and didn't really have enough provisions for a fourth person, he joined them in their hopes of finding somewhere safe.</p><p>The end of the world is upon them and a family, plus one who wasn't theirs, seek shelter, away from reaches of the deadly Toclafane.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Tale of Two Children

It was two weeks after the initial attacks by the Toclafane that they found him.

Haresh and Gita had decided, in the wake of the Master's destruction, to try to escape. Hopefully, they would be able to find some uncivilized corner of the world and live there until somebody killed the man causing this. They hadn't yet realized that there was only one person who could stop any of this from ever happening.

With their daughter in tow, the Chandras made their way across the ruins of buildings and out of Danemouth. They were a few miles out of London when they found another refugee: a brown-haired boy, around Rani's age, clutching what appeared to be a tube of lipstick like his life depended on it. Unlike the backpack-laden family, he seemed to only have the clothes on his back and whatever was in his pockets.

They coaxed him out with food – he must not have eaten in days – and asked him who he was. He said his name was Luke Smith. He was from Bannerman Road, in Ealing, and he was trying to find his mother and friends. He had been separated from them in the mass confusion after the Master attacked. Sarah Jane Smith, Maria Jackson, and Clyde Langer.

Rani couldn't help but notice the strange way he spoke. It was oddly formal. Not at all like other kids their age. He spoke not even conversationally but as if he read it out of books on speech and manners. It likely wasn't even a sign of being a well-off person, like she otherwise would have suspected, given that it was odd even for a person of status, in addition to the whole 'from Ealing' bit.

In the end, it was Gita that asked him to stay with them, even though Haresh and Rani had both been thinking it. The idea of leaving someone else's child to fend for himself wasn't a thought she coul bear. So, even though they barely knew him and didn't really have enough provisions for a fourth person, he joined them in their hopes of finding somewhere safe.

Rani asked him about the lipstick. He mumbled something about needing to get it back to his mother and shoved it in his pocket.

* * *

 

It was three months into the Master's reign and they considered themselves lucky to be alive.

The weren't entirely certain where they were. Maps were a thing of the past and they might have been traveling in circles, for all they knew. What they did know was that trying to cross the ocean and get out of Britain was a useless idea. The Toclafane hadn't come to kill them or force them into the workcamps yet, but they all knew it was a matter of time.

The Chandras had long since started to suspect that Luke knows more than he lets on, but none of them know how to approach him. It's Rani, who had spent the past few months trying to teach him how to act like a teenager for no reason other than the fact that his strange behavior irked her, who asked him about his life before the Master came to power. He had never wanted to talk about it and nobody wanted to ask.

“What did your mum do for a living?” she asked, hoping to sound conversational.

He looked at her with eyes that were, like everyone else's, aged and saddened by their lives, but that were at the same time all too young. “She was a journalist.”

“A journalist? A journalist. A... journalist.” Laughter bubbled up in Rani's throat at old, half-forgotten dreams. Luke seemed confused. “A _journalist_... I wanted to be a journalist. God, it seems like forever ago.”

“Oh...” He looked down, as if unsure how to respond, then back up. “You're crying.”

The girl ran her hand across her cheek, finding that it was indeed wet. “Yeah... yeah, I am.”

“Why are you crying?”

“I miss it.”

“Wanting to be a journalist?”

“Kind of. I miss everything. When I lived in a proper house. I miss Mum's garden and her plans to open a flower shop. I miss being _able_ to have dreams. I miss not running for my life every day. I miss Sam. I just... I just want everything to go back to the way it was!”

“But you can't.” It was a statement. A fact, like so many of the things about Luke, and, at that moment, it was the absolute last thing she wanted to hear.

“But I _want_ to! Don't you get that? What is it with you and your weird emotional detachment? Why are you so _logical_ about everything?”

“... I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you.”

“Just stop it! Stop being weird! It's like you're not even human!”

Luke's eyes darkened and he stood up to walk away silently, leaving Rani to wonder, not for the first time, if he really wasn't human.

* * *

 

It was four months after the world ended when theirs came crashing down.

The Toclafane had found them. Gita was dead and the three remaining ran. They managed to get away, but they needed to hide. The only place available was a locked and abandoned house. Haresh tried his best, but the door wouldn't budge.

Rani watched Luke's reaction. His attention was focused on the lock, as if he was thinking. He swallowed and stepped forward.

“Let me try.” Haresh raised an eyebrow at the idea of a ridiculously skinny teenager being able to open it, but moved aside anyway.

Luke pulled from his pocket that ridiculous lipstick tube that he had been carrying around for the past four months and pulled the cap off, revealing something that very much was _not_ lipstick. It was some sort of technology, with a pink light at the end. He pointed it at the lock and seemingly zapped it. Palming the thing in his left hand, he turned the door knob with his right and opened the door.

The two remaining Chandras stared at each other, then at Luke. It took them a second to register that they could go inside, as they both processed the undeniable proof that he wasn't a normal person.

Once they were safely in what appeared to have once been a living room, Rani turned towards the boy.

“What the hell was that thing? What the hell are you?” Rude, yes, but she no longer has it in her to be polite.

“Sonic lipstick,” he answered quietly. “It was my mum's. And I'm... I _am_ human. I'm just...”

“Just what? And what kind of journalism work did your mum do that she'd need a _lipstick weapon_?”

“Rani...” Haresh began, but Luke cut him off.

“It's not a weapon and she wasn't _just_ a journalist. She was a... an alien fighter. Aliens end up on Earth every day. Or they used to anyway. She helped the ones that needed it and stopped the ones that invaded. That's how she adopted me.”

“What?” Rani's confusion showed on her face, as she didn't quite finish the puzzle in her mind. Still too many missing pieces.

“I was... I was born not long before the Master took over. I was created. Grown in a lab by aliens. They called me the Archetype: the perfect human being. They wanted to use me to conquer planet Earth, but my mum – Sarah Jane – found me before that could happen. I ended up stopping the Bane – the aliens that created me – instead.”

“Why didn't you mention this earlier? We could have used it and maybe the Toclafane wouldn't have gotten Mum!”

“ _Rani_ ,” Haresh warned again, more forcefully this time. “ _Stop it._ ”

“ _I didn't tell you because I was scared to!_ ” The room went silent as Luke continued. “With the Master and everything... the Toclafane... I thought you would hate me. I suppose I was right... If you want me to go, then I will.”

“No,” Haresh said. “We're not leaving you by yourself. That's why you were with us. We're trying to keep you safe.”

“You don't care that I'm... odd?”

“Don't see that it matters now. Wish you would have mentioned it sooner... That and the reason you've carried around a tube of lipstick that wasn't actually lipstick.”

Rani still seemed upset, but didn't say anything against the matter. No matter how angry she was, the thought of leaving him behind to most likely be killed didn't settle well with her conscience.

“Right. I think we all just need to sleep. It hasn't been a good day and you both look exhausted.”

The teens could tell that Haresh was struggling to keep it together now that Gita was gone, so they nodded numbly and went to go round up abandoned bedding from around the house.

Their future, somehow, seemed even more bleak than it already was.

* * *

 

It was four months and two weeks after the Master took over Earth when Rani swallowed her pride and spoke to Luke again.

Managing to, for lack of a better word, _avoid_ someone who you traveled with for two weeks was difficult and her anger had really long since dissipated. She held the grudge more on principle than anything else, as he had been keeping a huge secret from them. Eventually, though, she gave in and let her curiosity get the better of her.

He was sitting on what might have been a rock or might also have once been part of a building, turning the sonic lipstick over in his hands. The outcropping was large enough for two, so she sat down by him, but pointedly avoiding looking at him.

“You used to fight aliens, huh?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Have you ever been to space?”

“Once. It was only to a spaceship in orbit, though. I've never been to another planet or anything.”

“You saw the Earth from space?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it like?”

“... Beautiful.”

“Bet it looks a lot different now, what with everything the Master's been doing.”

“Probably.”

“Why _were_ you in a spaceship?”

“An alien named Kudlak was kidnapping kids who were good at laser tag to fight in a war on his home planet.”

“What?”

“Only the war had been over for ten years. His computer's AI wasn't programmed for peace, though, and hid the message that told him it was over. He destroyed the AI when he found out.”

“But there were already kids on his home planet?”

“Yeah. He promised to try to find them and bring them back.”

“Sort of hope he didn't. If the war was already over, then it can't have been too bad for the kids right?”

“It's possible that they were treated well on the Uvodni homeworld.”

“Maybe they're better off than we are. The idea of humans out there who aren't suffering is oddly nice, even if they were kidnapped.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Rani stared at the ground, while Luke continued fiddling with the sonic. Eventually, she spoke up again.  
“I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

“Yelling at you.”

“You had every right to be angry. I should have told you.”

“But you had every right to be scared to. I shouldn't have pushed you to talk about it.”

“It was going to come out sooner or later.”

“We're screwed up, aren't we?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

Rani ran her hands over her face. “I mean, we're not exactly a normal pair of... what are we? Allies? Companions? Friends doesn't seem like the right word. Not right now.”

“Do you want to be friends?”

“I don't know. I don't know if we can be friends after all that's happened. At least not real, proper friends. Too much has happened. Maybe if circumstances were different... Can you imagine? If we met in a world that wasn't ruled by a psychopath from a flying ship?”

“You lived in Danemouth and I lived in Ealing.”

“Yeah, but... if we _could_ meet. And I could meet your friends... What were their names?”

“Clyde and Maria.”

“Yeah... and I could introduce you to Sam. I could work towards being a journalist...”

“Mum could help you with that.”

“Yeah. And Sam and I could help with alien invasions.” She held her hands up, miming a gun. “It'd be cool, wouldn't it? Not running for our lives every day?”

“We'd just be running for our lives every week instead.”

“Exactly.”

* * *

 

It was five months after they started running that they stopped.

Hopelessness had set in. Haresh had accepted that there was no peace to be found and slipped them into a workcamp. It was better than dying to the Toclafane, he reasoned, but they were still in danger. The conditions were terrible and it wasn't uncommon for workers to just drop dead.

They lived in a large row of houses, squeezed in with dozens of other people. Everyone was in fear of disease, as such a thing would spread quickly and the Toclafane didn't like sick days. Food was rationed among the residents of each house and there was never enough. No one spoke too loudly, as they didn't want to draw unwanted attention.

Luke continued to keep secrets. He told their housemates that he had an eidetic memory, but kept the alien fighting, lipstick weapon, and genius-level intelligence to himself. He, least of all, wanted to attract attention. Who knew how he would be exploited if he was known to be an alien's living weapon?

There was still some joy to be found, though. People would reminisce about the good old days. They would sing songs and sometimes play games. Luke, as it turned out, was terrible at charades, but very good at Twenty Questions. People would joke and say that having an eidetic memory was cheating.

Then there were the whispers. Whispers of a woman traversing the Earth in search of a way to defeat the Master. Martha Jones, her name was. She was said to have been on the Valiant the day the world ended. No one knew how she made it off.

More cynical residents said she was unlikely to complete her mission or even brushed off her entire existence as a myth. Others, though, clung to the idea that maybe, one day, they would be free. Luke was especially determined to believe in the idea, which seemed to go against his usual ideology of facts and statistics.

Rani asked him about it one day.

“Why shouldn't I believe she's real?” he asked in response.

“Just... you're always calculating probabilities and stuff, but you've never done that with the stories of Martha. I figured you would try to calculate the chances of her succeeding in killing the Master.”

“First of all, I can't do that because I don't know how she plans to kill him. It's a missing variable. Second of all, the stories make me think of something Mum used to say.”

“And what's that?”

“There's always a chance. You've never truly lost until you've given up hope.”

“... I think I would like your mum.”

“I think you would, too.”

* * *

 

It was eight months after Harold Saxon was elected to office when Haresh got ill.

It started out with a fever. He then developed a cough and became fatigued easily. The amount of work he put out greatly decreased, as the back-breaking factory labor became nigh impossible. He was forced to migrate to the basement to prevent it spreading. One day, he simply could not get out of bed to leave for the factories.

Luke offered to take care of him. Rani started to protest, thinking that her father was her responsibility, but he cut her off.

“Let me do it. I'm the best person to help take care of him.”

“Why's that, then?” She assumed he meant that she wasn't fit to help and bristled.

“I can't get sick.”

She deflated and the speech she was preparing to give about her own abilities never left her lips. “You can't?”

“No. I have perfect health. It's written in my genetic code.”

“Right... cause you're an alien weapon...”

“And what's the point of creating a weapon that's just going to get sick and become useless?”

“So when you say you're the best person to help, you mean...”

“There's no chance of illness being spread to me. You could catch it, though, and I don't want to see you end up like him.”

“I wish you would mention these sorts of things. It's like every other day, I'm learning something about you that it seems like you should have informed me of before.”

“So you'll let me handle it?”

“Yeah and... thanks, I guess.”

“What are friends for? … We're friends by now, aren't we?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

* * *

 

It was ten months after the end of everything that Haresh died.

They had tried the best they could, but there was nothing they could do. With the lack of proper healthcare, nutrition, or sleep, and the downright poisonous working environment, he was lucky to pass quietly rather than the many brutal deaths around them. Rani was crushed, of course. Her entire family was gone. The other people tried to comfort her, but none could truly help. Luke was the only person she spoke to for days.

Though she didn't mention it, she saw the irony in the fact that the boy that she had once partially blamed for her mother's death was the one she sought out for comfort when her father died.

Around them, the world grew closer to what it was that the Master was planning. Some said it was a battle fleet, so he could go out and conquer the stars the same way he conquered Earth.

The tales of Martha Jones continued, despite this. Even Luke's faith had faltered slightly when Japan burned, but the stories went on afterwards. She was said to be the only one who made it out alive, but she did make it out and was still on her quest to destroy the Master.

Luke had taken up caring for the unwell. He said it was because he was smart enough to know what to do for them, which was partially true. Rani was still the only one who knew the bit about his not getting ill.

“You could be a doctor,” she told him one day. “Intelligence and a complete and total inability to get ill? You'd be perfect for it.”

“Maybe,” he replied. “I was always more interested in hard sciences. Physics, chemistry, biology... All that sort of thing.

“Aren't you worried someone will find out about you, though, with the perfect health? You aren't worried someone will find out that you're an... the...”

“The Archetype. Perfect human being.” He dropped his shoulders. “What does it matter? It's not like they can do anything that the Toclafane can't and I can't run away anymore.”

“Stuck between a rock and a hard place...” she mused. “I'd be terrified to be in your position. Not knowing how people would react if they found out who I really am? I get enough nightmares as is.”

“I don't get nightmares. Or any dreams, actually.”

“You don't get dreams? What's that supposed to- No, wait. Let me guess. It's not in your genetic code.”

“No, it's not.”

Rani leaned back against the wall. “Having a best friend who was apparently grown in a lab by aliens is really weird.”

“We're best friends now?”

“Don't know anyone else around who would fit the role.”

* * *

 

It was a year to the day after the Master revealed himself and, for the first time, no one was afraid.

The instructions of Martha Jones were clear. One way or another, the message had been spread to everyone across the globe. Those that didn't know it were told what they had to do at that moment.

Crowds gathered in what used to be city squares and parks. Some held hands. Others bunched together. All had their faces turned skyward, where hope stood. Standing among the crowds were two kids, who, like all the others, chanted.

“Doctor.”

* * *

 

One morning in Danemouth, a girl, who dreamed of being a journalist, found out that the new Prime Minister assassinated the US president using some sort of drones that he had created and passed off as an alien race. Although taken aback by the news, she still had to move on with life. She took her things and headed off to school with her best friend, not yet knowing fully the extent of what lay beyond the stars.

That same morning in Ealing, a boy, who was the genius son of a journalist, found out the same. He was not as taken aback as the girl was. He already knew that the aliens were fake and the Prime Minister had to have been plotting something. He, too, had to keep going, though. His two best friends met him in his drive and they headed off to school together, while his mother stayed at home to investigate what had truly happened on the Valiant that morning, knowing that it had something to do with what lay beyond the stars.

Though they didn't know each other yet in this reality, they would, one day. They would meet a killer clown one day, and together they would fight species from all over the galaxy, meet a man who was the basis for legends across the universe, and even travel in time.

Neither would know, however, the original story of how they met.

 


End file.
